Take the Challenge on Multifamily Building Energy Efficiency

In 2013, the President’s Climate Action Plan expanded the Better Building Challenge to cover multifamily buildings. An instrumental component of the program—which supports commercial and industrial building owners in reducing energy use by at least 20 percent by 2020—is benchmarking.

The Better Building Challenge encourages owners of multifamily housing, from market-rate to federally assisted developments, to take part. The program provides free technical assistance to participants to measure, track, and improve portfolio energy ­performance. Participants develop a metric-driven action plan that aims to produce energy savings of 20 percent over ten years. Participants also complete a “showcase” energy efficiency project and share their portfolio-wide consumption with the Better Buildings Challenge network. As of December 2013, more than50 owners of multifamily buildings had signed on as partners, representing over 300,000 households and more than 250 million square feet (23,000 sq m) of space.

How can we reshape the built environment to use less water? Experts discuss government policies that help or hinder water conservation, the role of water availability and consumption data in raising awareness and shaping behavior, strategies that developers should employ to reduce the waste of water, and other factors influencing water use.

Speaking at the 2016 ULI Fall Meeting, Jonathan Rose, founder and president of the Jonathan Rose Companies, discussed creating a higher purpose for cities as outlined in his new book, The Well-Tempered City.